"Seeing It for What It Is"

It is all gone. All the apprehension, all the doubt, all the
worry, all the problems...everything.

I have broken through the rough, outer layer of a basic
understanding of this world now. I have decades upon decades
to go, fathoms upon fathoms of information to gather and process,
but I am no longer bothered by things in my life now.

Yes, I am victim to a slight cold right now (of which I hardly
ever have any), and I'm not getting much sleep right now because
I have to study and work, and I have virtually no actual free
time for myself (although I tend to make some anyway). My love
life is the pits and I'm reaching crunchtime on a site project.
I have no friends, and communicate with no one around me, save
for my roommate (proximity makes for feasibility). My semester's
almost over, and I need to fill out my schedule for my senior year,
my last year at the university. I need to decide whether to take
summer school or not. I have finances to keep track of now. I
have no one to look forward to. I am spoiled and inexperienced
in the ways of life.

And yet, none of this bothers me. I feel nothing. I am not numb;
just unaffected. I don't know if I've ever felt so calm. People do
not bother me right now. Arguments no longer are thorns in my side.
I feel no compulsion to respond to insults or challenges or unanswered
questions. The humor in humankind is that he can be expected to
react in a hostile fashion.

For a long time, I felt, to some degree, enslaved by my passions towards
debate or information processing, or by work, or by how other people
treated me. We like to say we are free, but so rarely is that the truth --
we think of it as willingly continuing the charade, as if we had a choice.
The reality is that we are not strong enough to resist -- the reality is
that we must truly face our flaws in order to defeat them.

But now it is easy for me to see through, to avoid, to take advantage of.
Events are dictated on my own terms now. The world has lost its turn --
it's my move.

This comes at a time when the goading and condescension and bitterness
and indifference from others towards me is near an all-time high. None
of it matters to me anymore. People scrambling to do their worst
with the minimal veneer of power and reputation they've attained through
all their clawing and scratching... I have played the games so many times
now that the result is predictable, the rewards minimal. I love to observe
the debate now, but I feel less obligated to participate in them. The
ties and bonds are gone. I know the points of disagreement, the
eventuality of its development, and the pitfalls and bounces.

The lower I sink, the deeper into the earth I set my foundations.
Break me down, harm me, destroy me. It doesn't affect me anymore.
I have nothing, yet I have everything. Or, at least, I know how
to get what I want. Very few things seem inaccessible to me now. I have
my fingers and eyes on everything now, touching and stroking and eyeing
the thin fibers holding everything together.

I attribute this to a healthy semester of learning and studying.
The philosophy, even at a level of basic surveying and understanding,
has imposed some order to the thoughts I've had for the longest time now,
and I have studied those things which I have doubted or feared or laughed at
triumphantly in the past. I allowed myself to be more honest with myself
about what I thought about other people, instead of allowing them
benefit of the doubt in my mind. I interpret peoples' actions more clearly
now. I've been opened up to the vast open system, the stock market. I'd
wanted to for the longest time, and it was just what I needed at just the
right time. I became more aware of my flaws, dropping much of the
pretension and naivete I am bombarded with through accusation by even my
most intimate of relations. I see the patterns, the reasons, the changes
before they occur.

I'm more sure than ever that this site is being done for the right reasons,
and I'm proud of all that is here. You see what I do, and you have many
different openings to touch upon to learn more about me. I am here for
you to see. I don't hide. I freely admit to my flaws, in order that
I might gain strength through it.

I realize that this site attracts what I want towards me. A web site
acts like a software agent. I pour out my interests, ideas, opinions,
talents, failings, insufferabilities, et al into this site, and it in
turn brings in outsiders, brings me work, brings me information,
brings me access. In a way, it is sentient -- it does my work for
me now.

Everything makes sense now. What I used to think was unfair, or cruel,
or nonsensical, or unpredictable, is now much different. It's to be
expected. Everything has an inherent nature. Whether or not I realize
what everything's true nature is is not important right now --
thinking of things in those terms is the first step.

What's left for me, I suppose, is reorganizing it all. I'm ready to begin.